We know that without bumblebees fruit will not grow on the vine, corn will not grow on the cob, alfalfa won’t feed farm animals, and cotton will not grow into underpants fabric for clothing, right?  Am I right?  Even though bees can sting us, they’re necessary, like it’s necessary to eat cabbage when we would rather have…a fruit roll-up.

“Bees are like flying dust mops,” says Jerry Bromenshenk (University of Montana, Missoula).  “Wherever they go, they pick up dust, airborne chemicals, and other samples. If it’s out there, they’ll find it and bring it back.”

Researchers from the University of Montana and Sandia Labs are training bees to sniff out land mines, or explosives such as TNT, that are found in land mines.

They train the bees to think of candy bars something sweet like honey while smelling explosives so that when they fly into a field that has landmines, they will want to spend more time in the area, picking up lots of the affected pollen and particles as they go.

When the bees return to the hives built by Sandia Labs, researchers can detect whether or not there’s TNT in the hives with hand-held radar equipment that they can’t detect out in a random field.

This is very important, because if people can find the landmines they can disable them, and get them safely out of the soil.  Poor farmers, and their children, will be able to use the land, not ruined by the poisons that explosives put in the soil, to grow food without blowing themselves up.  It’s estimated that more than 10,000 kids die in fields that have landmines every year.

What’s also exciting is how inexpensive this solution is because “…there are beekeepers everywhere…and you wouldn’t need a million-dollar piece of equipment and extensive training to use it.”

Read the full story at the Sandia website. Or even better: become an official bumblebee observer for scientists!

Its scientific/Latin name is Elysia chlorotica, but this Slug from the Sea has been called many other things.  Scientists are excitedly clapping their hands together about the SOLAR POWERED SEA SLUG!  The Kleptomaniac sea slug!  The HALF PLANT HALF ANIMAL!

Elysia chlorotica look like leaves but are actually animals.  When they eat algae for breakfast lunch and dinner, they’re not “…simply stealing what they need…from the algae. They’ve also stolen the recipe for how to make chlorophyll, a chemical that is vital to the process, and can make chlorophyll themselves. In other words, they have started to behave like their food. “

Imagine being able to feed yourself just by lying in the sun.  No messy cleanup!  Do you think that photosynthesis can make dessert?

Read more at: science news for kids

Can you cool water down and heat up water here??

Not only does Professor Blue have a blog, she also has a dog…who makes tracks in the snow. Among other animals. What did she find?
First, we shall refer to the dog as Mr. The Dog. What does this dog do?

1. sighs and pouts
2. eats things he shouldn’t
3. ‘marks territory’
4. sniffs everything
5. prefers eating pizza
6. nibbles on the ears of his best dog friends
7. howls sometimes (he is not what you would call a barking dog)
8. pants with his tongue hanging out
9. and as you can see in the picture above, catches up on some light reading.
10. but let’s not forget – he makes tracks in the snow!

Now that it’s winter time, it seems as if everyone’s tracks are obvious. If you have snow, that is.

We recently took a walk in the woods and spotted a trail of a single row of tracks. It was as if a one legged animal had been by because there was no left paw, right paw kind of tracks. What did it look like? Like a bobcat took out a pogo stick and bounced her way to this fallen pine tree and a pile of branches not yet covered with snow.

The State of Maine has a cool chart of animal tracks here that you can look and see if you have any visiting animals near your house. Thanks to the chart, it looks as if a red fox had paid us a visit. Mr. The Dog probably knows by sniffing it but he won’t give us any clues.

You can also send it to Professor Blue and we’ll post it here on the site. Professor Blue is considering adding a cape to her lab coat now.

A teenaged boy named Daniel Burd discovered a way to make plastic bags decompose quickly by mixing yeast, mud and water together to grow the bag-eating microbes. Hey! This is a very special mud pie. Or mud shake (depending on how much water he added).
This is very important because plastic bags are a huge problem. WIthout the help of bacteria and microbes plastic can last a very long time in the middle of oceans, in landfills, and everywhere, actually.

One example of the many problems is that animals eat the bags and choke to death on the plastic. You can read more reasons why plastic bags are so bad at earthresource.org.

From the article: “Almost every week I have to do chores and when I open the closet door, I have this avalanche of plastic bags falling on top of me,” he said. “One day, I got tired of it and I wanted to know what other people are doing with these plastic bags.’” The answer: not much. So he decided to do something himself.”

Read the full article.